Boettcher Investigator Julie Moreno and Dr. Stephanie McGrath conduct translational research in dogs with the goal of developing diagnostics and treatments for neurodegenerative diseases in humans.
Moreno studies neurodegenerative diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and aging.
Mathiason has an amazing talent for creating communities to work together for a common goal. For example, she has an interest in bringing other voices to scientific communication and leadership.
I’ll give you a current example – the outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China. Foundational science asks: Where did this virus come from? How does it relate to the other viruses we already know about? Within weeks, the scientific community sequenced the entire genome of the novel strain and determined its relatedness to other coronaviruses.
Kaityln Wagner studied prions and laid the groundwork for international collaborations during an externship at Hokkaido University in Japan.
More sensitive test technology and thorough testing might show a larger spread of the disease, and lead to more culled animals, said Mark Zabel, co-author of the opinion paper and associate director of the Prion Research Center at Colorado State University.
The research team detected a difference in prion strain properties in deer and elk, which is significant because these properties control the ability of whether prions can transmit a disease between species.
John Maday: A new report from the American Cervid Alliance (ACA), titled “Current Scientific Knowledge about CWD,” compiles research results and CWD trends, and the authors suggest the problem might be less severe than commonly believed.
A Colorado State University scientist, Mark Zabel, is investigating the role wild horses may play in slowing the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a 100 percent fatal and contagious brain-destroying infection, ravaging the country’s deer and elk herds.
Mark Zabel, an immunologist at Colorado State University, thinks because CWD is still a newly discovered condition, it may evolve rapidly. “It’s only a matter of time before a CWD prion emerges that can do the same thing and infect a human,” he said.